McCain had denied being the source for BuzzFeed after it published the dossier, which was funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, but had acknowledged giving it to the FBI.

In a newly unsealed declaration from September, former senior counterintelligence FBI agent Bill Priestap confirmed that the FBI received a copy of the first 33 pages of the dossier in December 2016 from McCain.

In another filing, David Kramer — a former State Department official and McCain associate — said in a Dec. 13, 2017, deposition that the dossier was given to him by author and former British spy Christopher Steele, which he then provided to more than a dozen journalists at outlets including CNN, BuzzFeed and The Washington Post. The details were first reported by The Daily Caller.

The report was also shared with State Department official Victoria Nuland, Obama National Security Council official Celeste Wallander and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.

The filings were unsealed as part of an ongoing libel case against BuzzFeed by a Russian businessman.

In his deposition, Kramer said that McCain gave a copy of the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey on Dec. 9. Kramer told investigators that it was the sense from Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson that “having Senator McCain provide it to the FBI would give it a little more oomph than it had had up until that point.”

“I think they felt a senior Republican was better to be the recipient of this rather than a Democrat because if it were a Democrat, I think that the view was that it would have been dismissed as a political attack,” Simpson said.

Every day more facts come to light revealing that Trump was right about things the media ridiculed him for saying. Little wonder so Americans concur that the liberal #MSM are the #EnemyOfThePeople. https://t.co/3dQd8qyfCy

Bill Priestap, the top FBI counterintelligence official, told a federal court last August in a sworn declaration that John McCain passed the Steele dossier to James Comey on December 9, 2016, and that the FBI briefed Obama on it even though the FBI hadn't verified its claims. pic.twitter.com/kghHp35mdR

"Newly unsealed court filings show the office of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., shared with the FBI and a host of media outlets the unverified dossier that alleged the Russians had compromising information on now-President Trump."https://t.co/lgHAwBhemv